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<title>Overloading and optional arguments: Cairo: A Vector Graphics Library</title>
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<div class="sect1">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="bindings-overloading"></a>Overloading and optional arguments</h2></div></div></div>
<p>
      Function overloading (having a several variants of a function
      with the same name and different arguments) is a language
      feature available in many languages but not in C.
    </p>
<p>
      In general, language binding authors should use restraint in
      combining functions in the cairo API via function
      overloading. What may seem like an obvious overload now may
      turn out to be strange with future additions to cairo.
      It might seem logical to make
      <a class="link" href="cairo-cairo-t.html#cairo-set-source-rgb" title="cairo_set_source_rgb ()"><code class="function">cairo_set_source_rgb()</code></a>
	an overload of <code class="function">cairo_set_source()</code>, but future plans to add
	<code class="function">cairo_set_source_rgb_premultiplied()</code>,
      which will also take three doubles make this a bad idea. For
      this reason, only the following pairs of functions should
      be combined via overloading
    </p>
<pre class="programlisting">
void
cairo_set_source (cairo_t *cr, cairo_pattern_t *source);

void
cairo_set_source_surface (cairo_t          *cr,
                          cairo_surface_t  *source,
                          double            surface_x,
                          double            surface_y);
      
void
cairo_mask (cairo_t         *cr,
	    cairo_pattern_t *pattern);

void
cairo_mask_surface (cairo_t         *cr,
		    cairo_surface_t *surface,
		    double           surface_x,
		    double           surface_y);
      
cairo_surface_t *
cairo_image_surface_create (cairo_format_t	format,
			    int			width,
			    int			height);
cairo_surface_t *
cairo_image_surface_create_for_data (unsigned char	       *data,
				     cairo_format_t		format,
				     int			width,
				     int			height,
				     int			stride);

cairo_status_t
cairo_surface_write_to_png (cairo_surface_t	*surface,
			    const char		*filename);

cairo_status_t
cairo_surface_write_to_png_stream (cairo_surface_t	*surface,
				   cairo_write_func_t	write_func,
				   void			*closure);

cairo_surface_t *
cairo_image_surface_create_from_png (const char	*filename);

cairo_surface_t *
cairo_image_surface_create_from_png_stream (cairo_read_func_t	read_func,
					    void		*closure);
    </pre>
<p>
      Note that there are cases where all constructors for a type
      aren't overloaded together. For example
      <a class="link" href="cairo-PNG-Support.html#cairo-image-surface-create-from-png" title="cairo_image_surface_create_from_png ()"><code class="function">cairo_image_surface_create_from_png()</code></a>
      should <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> be overloaded together with
      <a class="link" href="cairo-Image-Surfaces.html#cairo-image-surface-create" title="cairo_image_surface_create ()"><code class="function">cairo_image_surface_create()</code></a>.
      In such cases, the remaining constructors will typically need to
      be bound as static methods. In Java, for example, we might have:
    </p>
<pre class="programlisting">
Surface surface1 = ImageSurface(Format.RGB24, 100, 100);
Surface surface2 = ImageSurface.createFromPNG("camera.png");</pre>
<p>
      Some other overloads that add combinations not found in C may be
      convenient for users for language bindings that provide
      <span class="type">cairo_point_t</span> and <span class="type">cairo_rectangle_t</span>
      types, for example:
    </p>
<pre class="programlisting">
void
cairo_move_to (cairo_t       *cr,
               cairo_point_t *point);
void
cairo_rectangle (cairo_t           *cr,
                 cairo_rectangle_t *rectangle);
    </pre>
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